# Council on Foreign Relations The most exclusive and influential foreign policy institution in America. Founded in 1921, CFR maintains ~5,000 invitation-only members drawn from the senior ranks of government, military, intelligence, business, media, and academia. Its journal *Foreign Affairs* is the single most influential publication in international relations. CFR doesn't produce policy papers like Heritage — it convenes the *people who make foreign policy* and shapes consensus through private meetings, task force reports, and the pages of *Foreign Affairs*. CFR is what both left-populists and right-populists mean when they attack "the Blob" or "the foreign policy establishment" — it is the literal institutional embodiment of bipartisan foreign policy consensus. Its membership roll reads like a who's-who of every Secretary of State, CIA director, and national security advisor from both parties for the last century. ## Influence Model CFR's power comes not from research output but from **convening power**: - ***Foreign Affairs* journal:** Published since 1922. George Kennan's "X Article" (1947) — the foundational document of containment strategy — was published in *Foreign Affairs*. Samuel Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations" debuted there. When a foreign policy idea enters *Foreign Affairs*, it enters the elite consensus formation process. - **Private meetings:** CFR hosts off-the-record roundtables, dinners, and briefings where policymakers, military leaders, intelligence officials, and business executives discuss foreign policy. These meetings are where consensus forms *before* it appears in public. - **Task forces:** CFR convenes bipartisan task forces on major policy questions — their reports carry weight precisely because they represent pre-negotiated bipartisan agreement among elites. - **Membership as signal:** CFR membership is a marker of belonging to the foreign policy establishment. Not being a member is, for senior foreign policy professionals, a notable absence. ## The "Blob" Critique Both left and right populists attack CFR as the symbol of elite foreign policy consensus: **From the right (MAGA/[[New Right]]):** - CFR represents "globalism" — multilateral institutions, free trade, alliance commitments - Trump's "[[America First]]" foreign policy explicitly rejected the CFR consensus - [[Steve Bannon]] called the CFR part of the "party of Davos" - [[Curtis Yarvin]] and NRx thinkers view CFR-style institutions as the operational arm of the "[[The Cathedral]]" **From the left (progressive):** - CFR represents militarism and interventionism — [[Iraq War]], [[Libya]], drone warfare - Ben Rhodes (Obama deputy NSA) coined "the Blob" specifically to describe the bipartisan interventionist consensus that CFR embodies - Progressive critics argue CFR's corporate membership (Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, ExxonMobil) ensures foreign policy serves business interests Both critiques have merit. CFR's consensus has supported interventions that failed (Iraq), trade agreements that displaced workers (NAFTA/TPP), and alliances that create moral hazard. But CFR's consensus has also supported the rules-based international order, nuclear nonproliferation, and alliance structures that prevented great-power conflict for 75 years. ## Budget and Membership - **Budget:** ~$80-90M annually - **Members:** ~5,000 (invitation-only; members must be U.S. citizens or permanent residents) - **Corporate members:** Major corporations and financial institutions - **Funding:** Membership dues, corporate sponsors, foundations, endowment income - **Founded:** 1921 (emerged from the Paris Peace Conference post-WWI) ## See Also - [[Brookings Institution]] — Complementary establishment policy institution - [[RAND Corporation]] — Complementary defense/security research - [[Heritage Foundation]] — Movement-right alternative foreign policy infrastructure - [[Think Tank Ecosystem]] — Full think tank landscape - [[Foreign Influence Ecosystem]] — The foreign policy questions CFR shapes